‘Definitely.’
I had time to waste before three, and so wasted it in The Hanging Man, with Geronimo. Idle chit chat mostly. We were both dodging what we were really thinking about; what was happening with Longy?
Wednesday 2:30 p.m.
I knew Longy had said to meet him at three, but I still had an appointment with Tabatha that I intended to keep. I thought if I got there early, I could grab Longy and take him with me to see her. He was as much her friend as mine. And the state he was in I knew she'd want to know what was happening as much as I did.
I jumped into Betsy, my pride and joy; a Triumph Dolomite Sprint. Bucket seats, walnut interior, chrome trimmings and the finest stereo money could buy … or, more accurately, a man named Terence could acquire. I seriously spent on Betsy
The engine, as always, turned over first time. The sweet sound was like music to my ears; the gentle purr vibrating through me, the calming sensation gently soothing my jangled nerves.
Before I went to Longy's, I wanted to get some shopping in. When we used to bunk off school every now and then, we’d organise a big feast; usually stuff we’d pinch from a rival deli. I thought it’d be nice to try and recapture some of our youthful exuberance; a bit of a trip down memory lane. Relax him a bit with happy memories.
I picked up a large whole pepperoni, a ciabatta, some taramasalata and a large pot of pickled green olives. (All of which I paid for, although I did consider pinching it, just to keep in with the spirit of things.) But I was in a rush and paying was quicker.
Longy lived in a three-storey block of flats near Shepherds Bush, in one of those housing estate numbers run by a charitable trust. Built in the thirties and designed to look like a manor house, originally it must have looked quite welcoming. But now with the red brick discoloured by a combination of weather and car fumes, it had lost its once hospitable shine.
His flat was at the top and each level of the building was marked with a dual swinging door that led on to a corridor which had four identical flats in it. Longy’s was at the far end: number 24. I walked up to the door, bag in one hand, large pepperoni in the other. I banged the brass door knocker. It did one of those unintentional double knocks that they sometimes do. I heard movement inside: a hurried shuffling, but it wasn’t coming towards me. Remembering the state my friend had been in, I thought it best to announce who I was.
‘Longy, it’s Wolfy.’
I could hear hurried movement.
‘Longy, y’oright? Longy … Longy?’
I banged again and shouted through the letterbox. I could see right through into his front room. A figure was climbing out of the window.
‘Longy, don’t you dare!’
Fearing the worst I tried to force the door, kicking it with all my might. It shook but didn't budge. I kicked it again, and I heard the lock crack
‘Longy!’ I shouted. ‘Longy!’ I had no choice. I stepped back and ran at the door, shoulder first.
Bingo.
I blasted through it hearing the door frame splinter as I crashed on to the floor of Longy’s hallway. The bag of food skewed across the polished surface. I watched almost in slow motion as the bag collided with the wall and the olives exploded out of it. Rising to my feet I went towards the window.
I didn’t want to look out of the window. Didn’t want to see what could be down on the ground beneath me. Taking a deep breath I slowly stuck my head out. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There on the drainpipe was a man; a skinny man wearing a large black cloak, black cowboy hat, and a pair of circular rimmed black sunglasses. He had an anaemic skin tone which resembled a corpse’s, and had a wildness to his appearance. He was almost at the bottom. Glancing back along his route he saw me looking down at him. Reaching with his right hand towards his back he pulled something out. I saw black metal glisten as the sunlight caught it.
‘Shiiitttt!’ I screamed as I dived back into the room and the spray of bullets shattered the panes of glass behind me.
I lay on the floor for what felt like an age, clutching my pepperoni; clinging to it as though it could protect me from the automatic weapon that had just been discharged. It was only when I’d realised that I’d fallen on some of the scattered olives that I finally got up, brushing myself down I went across to the window. I waved the pepperoni out first before I sneaked a look. My mind was addled and I was shaking, which is the only reason I have for thinking a gunmen would mistake a large pepperoni for a human. Luckily for me this guy had already left.
I turned from the window and looked around. Something was wrong. I knew it instantly; I could feel it in the air. Longy’s apartment was your standard one-bed council flat. He’d done a lot of work to it, really spruced it up. You could forget you were in an estate if you didn't look out the window. He'd merged the kitchen and the front room together making it partially open plan. It had a hard wood floor that stretched from the kitchen area to the bedroom.
Neutral colours and minimalist layout: clean and simple. It was the kind of place where you instantly felt comfortable. But I didn’t get that sensation as I stood surrounded by the debris. That previous joyous air had gone, consumed, devoured by something else.
The door to the bedroom was slightly ajar. Pushing it slowly open I saw him. It was Longy. He was dead; hanging from the ceiling, suspended from the light fitting by a leather cord, his weight straining the fitting. The swaying of his body created a melancholy creaking sound.
I slumped to the floor. I didn’t feel anguish or pain, not at first, more a sense of the inevitable finally coming to fruition. Maybe I’d always known that he’d end up in a bad way, maybe we’d been right when we thought he was too good to get what he deserved.
He was dressed in a full-length black rubber gimp suit. A cellophane plastic bag covered his head and enveloped his face, distorting his countenance. The transparent plastic stretched his features, magnifying the horrified look that was now seared into my mind. The eyes were open and stared out into some other place; a place beyond my field of vision. The cellophane had been drawn into his mouth; his final gulp of air sealing his fate. I stood back and held his legs to try and stop the incessant noise of his swinging. Tears rushed down my face;
As I held him I noticed that there was a hole in the back of the suit, and a banana had been shoved in his arse. Letting go, I pulled out my mobile and dialled the police, walking back into the hallway as I did it.
None of his neighbours had appeared to find out what was happening. Not that I expected them to. I knew their type and what they were like. They could tell you what time one of the residents went out, had their dinner, took a bath, and had a crap. But when it came to knowing something important, they were blind, deaf, dumb and ignorant of everything. I hated those kind of people, and I hated the days of gossip they were going to get from my friend.
I walked back into his front room and plunged into one of his plush settees, waiting for the police. It didn't take long, they move strangely fast when you mention dead bodies. I could hear heavy steps, confident in their movement.
The footsteps were getting louder. I could distinguish the voices. Two I didn’t know, but one was very familiar; a wheezy gravel sound that strained to get out of the body that held it.
Two uniformed coppers both over six feet, pushed through the broken door. I rose to greet them. One was older than the other; he had a large brown moustache and was heavy set. He looked like a walrus. The younger one couldn’t have been more than twenty, and had an expression on his face like a goldfish; lips pouting waiting in anticipation for his ignorance to make itself vocal.
And just as I thought things couldn't get any worse. DS William Bosley appeared in the doorway, lagging behind the others, wheezing and coughing, clutching the door frame to steady himself, his white knuckles straining as his chest reverberated under the pressure of his spasming lungs.
He smiled as his gaze caught mine, a joyous smile that washed across his entire façade, from the tips of his greying, slightly grea
sy, thinning hair, right down to his saggy third chin. Bosley was happy. He thought life had answered all his prayers, had delivered me to him on a plate. A more tenuous grasp on joy he could not have had.
Bosley was near his fifties. The body had gone wayward, and the years of drink and cigarettes had started to catch up on him. His face was redder than usual. Normally it just looked like the arteries under his face had exploded, giving him a kind of pebble dash effect. But now he looked like they were pulsing under his skin. The other coppers had stopped in front of me waiting for Bosley.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Wolf.’
‘Bollocks.’ I mumbled under my breath.
‘My goodness if I’d have known it was you I would have rushed over.’ Bosley was strutting, revelling in the sensation that seeing me had brought upon him.
‘You weren’t that slow. How were the stairs?’ My survival instincts were in overdrive.
‘Don’t you worry about the stairs. I’m still quick enough to catch some people.’ He wanted to act calm, not reveal his need, but he couldn’t, it boiled inside him; a raging torrent that flowed through every fibre of his being. It was a disease that seethed under his skin. The only cure being my destruction.
Bosley and I had a less than cordial relationship as you may have already guessed. It really was a one-sided affair as I had absolutely no animosity towards him at all, other than the obvious. The truth is not something I really wish to get into, or explain in any great depth. There are reasons, quite a few actually, but I'm going to skip them. Let’s just say that Bosley hated me, and it was probably justified.
Even with the all-consuming hate Bosley felt for me, and disregarding my initial reaction. I was rather glad to see him. For all his faults, and they are numerous, he’s a damn fine copper, and I knew he’d do whatever it took to catch Longy’s killer.
‘D’y’know him, guv?’ The young copper asked, obviously not deducing from the fact that Bosley had addressed me by name that we’d been formerly introduced. I was almost certainly in the presence of a future chief inspector.
‘Where’s the deceased?’ Bosley asked, completely ignoring his junior’s question.
‘This way,’ I gestured to Longy’s bedroom.
I don't think I'd ever taken ten more miserable depressing steps in my entire life. Beads of sweat rolled down my back. Seeing him once had been bad enough. The rerun was worse. The four of us stepped into the room.
‘Jesus!’ Bosley’s exclamation caught me off guard. I hadn’t expected such a response from the haggard old warhorse. The Walrus gulped, trying to control his horror, not wanting to set a bad example for his young charge. He needn’t have worried. The Goldfish was clutching his mouth and staring at the floor.
Longy had left us with a haunting image that would track us to the grave. Bosley and the Walrus stared in silence, transfixed; looking, trying to reason, see beyond the hideous to the man that lurked before.
‘Call forensics. I’ll talk to Mr Wolf.’ Bosley addressed the Walrus once he’d regained his composure.
‘You better go check to see what the neighbours know. Bes’ take him with you, hey.’ Bosley said signalling the Goldfish. The Walrus nodded in concurrence, as happy as his young friend to be out of there.
The cocky sure-footedness of the young one had gone, replaced by a far more solemn gait. He’d had his first introduction to the barbarity of modern life; I don’t think he’d enjoyed the meeting.
Bosley sniffed the air, his policeman’s nose detecting something I hadn’t. The scent tickled my nostrils; tobacco. But there wasn’t any cigarette stub to go with it though. Whoever had been smoking must have taken it with them, leaving only the smoke to signify their former presence.
The marble ashtray on the Coffee table had two cigar stubs in it, which was all Longy ever smoked; big, chunky fat ones like bonsai tree trunks. I imagined Longy holding them and laughing.
‘So, what happened?’ Bosley said, breaking me out of my pleasant reminiscence. He was staring at the pepperoni that I was still grasping. I couldn’t blame him for the assumption; I knew one of them would have it, but I respected his tact in not saying anything. He’d spent so long wading through the cesspool of life that everything he saw took on a seedy view. Life to him was a worthless thing. People were either victims or victimisers, and the only pure unsullied thing he knew was justice.
He paid back the wrongdoer, and was why I grated on him. In his world, where the boundaries were so clearly defined, I was an abhorrence; a flaunting spectre of all that he’d spent his life trying to dispose of. His justice, his law, when he needed it most had failed when it came to me. He didn’t understand the thoughts that blurred the lines between black and white, and justified the greyness in which I existed. The way sometimes survival required you to bend the rules, or even break them.
I explained to him exactly what had happened; including the olives, broken door, and cowboy-hat-wearing, machine-gun-waving stranger. Bosley looked sceptical at my version of events, but he didn’t say anything. He just looked at the room, moving his head closer to certain objects so he could get a better view.
He may have appeared inattentive, but his ears were hanging on my every word, checking every tone for any indication that I may have been lying. He looked at the window, scanned the broken glass, fiddled about with the bits on the floor with his pen. My voice echoed around Longy’s apartment; it felt foreign, strange. I was willingly telling the truth to a policeman. I’d never done that before. I’d lied to them on occasions when I didn’t need to: just so I could keep my hand in, but now it was spouting out of me like a geyser.
Bosley was about to ask a question when the other two coppers returned from their door stepping. The neighbours — the ones that were in — had, of course, seen nothing. Nobody seemed surprised. But then why would we be? We all knew the score.
‘Forensics are on their way.’
‘Good. Guard the scene. Make sure no one gets in.’ Walrus nodded in compliance to Bosley’s order.
Goldfish was trembling. His eyes were darting across the room, scared to settle on anything. Wherever he looked he could see Longy. The table, the wall, the white rug with the Chinese script; all of them were mutating into my friend’s ghastly countenance.
‘I’m gonna take Mr Wolf and check the outside. Don’t touch anything.’ Goldfish and Walrus positioned themselves outside the door, forming a fleshy, trembling barrier against inquisitive eyes.
My story was holding up … much to Bosley’s disgust. He didn’t want to believe me, didn’t want to think that I was innocent. It went against everything he knew. He was hoping that the more he dissected it, the more chance there was for a flaw to appear. We walked downstairs in silence, over towards the drainpipe where the guy in the cowboy hat had taken potshots at me.
Bosley looked up the drainpipe, measuring the angle between it and Longy’s window in his mind. There were some spent shells on the floor. He knelt over them still sifting with his trusty pen. I pulled out my box of Bensons, took one and offered one to Bosley. He didn’t even respond, just looked at me and pulled out a cigarette of his own.
‘It’s a cigarette. It doesn’t constitute a bribe,’ I said rather annoyed. ‘If it did you’d be a cheap fucker.’
He gave me a patronising smile and, lighting up his own cigarette, said. ‘Where exactly was the alleged assailant?’
‘The alleged assailant,’ I replied, mimicking his inflection, ‘was about there when he shot at me.’ I pointed to midway down the drainpipe. Bosley looked carefully at the place I was indicating, studying it thoroughly. A car horn beeped behind us. The forensic team had arrived.
‘Stay here.’ Bosley walked across to greet them. A grey-haired man in a white plastic jumpsuit stepped out and shook hands with Bosley. I didn’t pay much attention to him, more fascinated with the spent shells. They were scattered on the floor, glinting. Checking Bosley was still distracted in his conversation, I quickly slipped one into my pocket. I don’t k
now why. I had no idea what use it was going to be … if any.
I could feel my phone ringing in my pocket the vibrations trembling through my jacket. I looked at the screen: it was Tabatha. I let it ring. What was I supposed to do? I knew she was pissed, knew she was going to start. But what could I do? Some things you don't explain on the phone.
Bosley came back across accompanied by a small mousy haired woman dressed in the same plastic white jumpsuit. The grey-haired guy and three of his colleagues walked through the main entrance, off to delve through Longy’s private affairs. They didn’t seem perturbed. I suppose they were used to it.
I’d always thought that normality’s merely what you did most often, which for them was probing the underbelly of man, searching and scouring the minuscule for the facts. Where what they faced others would regard as disturbing, they regarded as average. It was far easier for man to adapt to his situation then for the situation to adapt to man.
‘I want you to dust this drainpipe thoroughly,’ Bosley said to the woman.
She viewed the drainpipe with hostility. She was more than likely an underling, new to the job and so burdened with all the nasty tasks; dreaming of the day when it fell to some other sap to catch the crap.
‘I take it that’s your car?’ Bosley pointed at Betsy. I nodded.
‘Well, that one’s mine.’ He indicated a crusty old red Astra. ‘I want you to follow it.’
‘Why?’
‘I need you to make your statement at the station. Get it all above board. Unless you’d rather go in my car?’ The malice had returned to his voice.
‘Yeah right, but I’m not following too close. I have a reputation to protect. Being seen near that dirty old thing could seriously damage it.’
‘Oh, I thoroughly understand. It must be extremely difficult to protect your reputation for probity.’
‘Sarcasm hey, Bosley? Is that allowed in the police force? Isn’t there some kind of directive that banned it, along with a sense of ethnic equality?’
‘Just follow.’
The Tale of the Wolf (The Kenino Wolf Series) Page 2